Cisco Network Convergence System 1004 L-Band Transponder Line Card Data Sheet

Service Providers continue to work with technology providers to identify innovations for scarce long haul and subsea fiber assets as demands continue to grow exponentially. Next-gen transponders provide incremental capacity improvements as we approach Shannon’s limit. A key approach to tackling this head-on is extending to L-Band frequencies to double capacity on such networks. Network Convergence System 1004 uses state of the art silicon along with complete automation and real-time visibility to deliver a universal transponder solution that provides best-in-class performance for metro, long-haul and submarine applications while being simple to deploy and manage. The solution offers both C-Band and L-Band frequency solutions.

Product features and benefits of NCS 1004 L-Band transponder

The trunk ports of the NCS 1004 L-Band transponder are capable of several line rates with fine control of modulation format, baud-rate and forward error correction allowing the solution to be used for metro, terrestrial long-haul or submarine applications:

●      The baud-rate can be controlled between 31.5Gbd/s and 72Gbd/s.

●      The modulation format can be controlled between QPSK, 8-QAM, 16QAM and 32QAM.

●      Hybrids between modulation formats can be configured to achieve 0.001 bits/symbol of granularity.

●      Forward Error Correction (FEC) of 27% and 15% overhead.

●      Trunk line rate from 200G to 400G in 50G increments.

Each line card can provide up to 8x100Gbe/OTU4 client ports. The client ports map to two trunk ports operating any rate between 100G and 400G in 50G increments. The baud-rate, modulation format and FEC of each trunk port is software-configurable per slice.

The Cisco NCS 1004 L band system provides the following hardware benefits:

●      Transport of any trunk rate between 200 and 400Gbps wavelengths on the same platform through software provisioning.

●      Support of granular control of baud-rate and modulation format to maximize spectral efficiency.

●      One universal transponder that is performance optimized for metro, long-haul and submarine applications.

●      Support for up to 350,000 ps/nm of residual chromatic dispersion compensation.

●      Transport of 100GE and OTU4 on the same platform through software provisioning.

●      400G DWDM provides unparalleled scale and density. With 64 channels of 400G at 75Ghz, the NCS 1004 provides 25.6Tbps in 16RU.

●      State of the art AES-256 Encryption at scale – 3.2Tbps of encrypted trunk capacity per 2RU.

●      Non-Linear Compensation for maximum performance on compensated legacy subsea cables and for non-linear terrestrial fibers.

●      SOP tracking speed of up to 10 million rad/s for aerial fiber applications.

●      The Cisco NCS 1004 features software configurable modulation scheme per slice, allowing the operator to customize the spectral efficiency and reach characteristics of individual wavelengths. 69Gbaud/s symbol rate doubles capacity per interface when compared to 32Gbaud/s signals today.

Table 1.        Sample modulation format, baud-rate, line rate combinations

Wavelength tunability

The line interface supports software-provisionable tunability across the full L band, covering 96 channels on the 50-GHz grid. Grid-less tuning support allows for continuous tunability in increments of 0.1 GHz and the ability to create multicarrier super-channels over flex spectrum line systems.

Protocol transparency

The Cisco NCS 1004 can transparently deliver 100Gbe and OTU4 clients over 2x 100G-400G.

Fine Control of Coherent DWDM interface

The Cisco NCS 1004 provides the ability to modify baud-rate and modulation format with fine control to meet capacity and reach requirements for a range of use-cases as shown in Figure 3.

●      Use 69Gbaud/s line rates to maximize capacity at lowest price per bit for Metro and Long-Haul networks.

●      Use real-time network bandwidth and performance data to maximize line rate capacity on coherent DWDM interface.

●      Support line rates that can maximize capacity for bandwidth constrained 50Ghz and 100Ghz spaced legacy ROADM networks.

●      Maximize spectral efficiency on submarine cable line system for the target Q-margin.

Encryption

With increasing asks for data privacy and data protection across the globe, encryption of any data that leaves the Data Center facility is becoming an important requirement for cloud operators. The NCS 1004 provides AES256 based OTN-Sec encryption for 100GE and OTU4 clients. IKEv2 is used for authentication of the devices in an encryption session and the protocol provides pre-shared keys, certificates or 802.1X based authentication options. Elliptical Curve Diffie Hilman (ECDH) Key Exchange protocol runs over a GCC (Generic Communication Channel) between two NCS1004 nodes.

Management

The Cisco NCS 1004 provides comprehensive management capabilities to support Operations, Administration, Maintenance, and Provisioning (OAM&P) capabilities through IOS-XR CLI, SNMP, Syslog, and XML. In addition, iPXE for automated software download and Zero Touch Provisioning (ZTP) for automated configuration download are available for simplified installation. For machine-to-machine configuration and management of NCS 1004, NETCONF, RESTCONF and gRPC transport protocols with JSON, XML and GPB encoding are provided. OpenConfig protocols for management GNMI and operations GNOI are also supported. The NCS 1004 provides a set of native YANG models as well as the ability to map into any industry standard or customer defined YANG data models. For monitoring, NCS 1004 provides a streaming telemetry feature that relies on a push mechanism to disseminate user selected PM and status information at user specified frequencies at granular 10 second intervals. This improves monitoring speed and scale compared to traditional pull based mechanisms such as SNMP. The telemetry infrastructure also allows for events such as alarms, port-state changes to be notified.

The NCS 1004 can also support third application hosting. Such an application can be hosted in a container or docker and can perform provisioning and monitoring on the NCS 1004.

Performance monitoring

The Cisco NCS 1004 supports performance monitoring of optical parameters on the client and DWDM line interface including laser bias current, transmit and receive optical power. Ethernet RMON statistics for the client ports and OTN error counters for the trunk are also available. Calculation and accumulation of the performance-monitoring data are supported in 15-minute and 24-hour intervals as per G.7710. Physical system parameters measured at the wavelength level, such as mean polarization mode dispersion, accumulated chromatic dispersion, pre-FEC Bit Error Rate and received Optical Signal-to-Noise Ratio (OSNR) are also included in the set of performance-monitoring parameters. These parameters can greatly simplify troubleshooting operations.

The NCS 1004 provides a set of port and system LEDs for a quick visual check of the operational status. The various LEDs are described in detail in Table 9.

Headless operation

The headless operation allows for NCS 1004 data plane to operate errorless during software upgrades and when the controller card is either physically absent or in a failed state. Trunk and client statistics will be accumulated and will be available to the user once the controller is up. In addition, fault propagation will continue to operate for client and trunk failures without the presence of the controller module.

Feature summary

The following table summarizes the features of the NCS 1004 L-Band Line Card

Table 2.        Feature summary

Regulatory compliance

Table 3 lists regulatory compliance information for the trunk card. Note that all compliance documentation may not be completed at the time of product release. Please check with your Cisco sales representative for countries other than Canada, the United States, and the European Union.

Table 3.        Regulatory compliance

Table 4 provides the DWDM specifications, Table 5 details receive-side optical performances, Table 6 lists performance-monitoring parameters, Table 7 provides card specifications, Table 8 gives ordering information.

Table 4.        DWDM specifications

Table 5.        DWDM receive-side optical performances

Table 6.        Trunk performance-monitoring parameters

Table 7.        NCS 1004 specifications

Table 8.        Ordering information

Cisco environmental sustainability

Information about Cisco’s environmental sustainability policies and initiatives for our products, solutions, operations, and extended operations or supply chain is provided in the “Environment Sustainability” section of Cisco’s Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Report.

Reference links to information about key environmental sustainability topics (mentioned in the “Environment Sustainability” section of the CSR Report) are provided in the following table:

Cisco makes the packaging data available for informational purposes only. It may not reflect the most current legal developments, and Cisco does not represent, warrant, or guarantee that it is complete, accurate, or up to date. This information is subject to change without notice.

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